On Monday, thanks to Derek Naber from the Department of Metropolitan Development, I had the opportunity to tour the Central State Hospital grounds to take a look at their ongoing redevelopment efforts. Derek also sent me the latest pdf of the current plans, which can be viewed here. I’ll excerpt a few of the more relevant slides throughout this post for reference purposes.
There have already been a few apartment buildings built upon the grounds that have been occupied for 2 years now. This fall, the southwest corner will see the opening of a new Christel House Acadamy. Unfortunately, the...

Recently, I have been honored with an appointment to the Plan2020 initiative as a part of the Connect Indy Committee. I ask the readers of this blog take this as an opportunity to make some recommendations that they wish the initiative will address. Please post a comment, or send me an e-mail at kevin dot kastner at gmail dot com. This is our chance to have a say in the six plans that the city will be updating as a part of this process.
Social Media ...

Speaking of “Taking Time to Photograph…” Commuting home last fall I noticed a building had magically appeared on the northeast corner of 33rd & Illinois – surely it wasn’t there before, right?
Turns out it had been there all along……but it had recently been transformed into a work of art.
Last week I was finally able to stop by and snap some photos of these fantastic murals without any cars blocking the view. It wasn’t until I reached the last few walls that I saw a company name in the window.
Welcome to the worldwide headquarters...

Often while traveling around the city, I’ll get out of my car or dismount my bike and take some photos of structures or infrastructure that I find interesting. I do this for the blog, mainly, but I’ve also come to learn the value of having a backlog of thousands of photos stored online.
One building that has undergone a change was located at 17th and Bellefontaine. I documented it for a blog post back in 2008, during the point when I was photographing various little-known urban corners around the city (note: I’m going to do this again some day, I hope):
Yesterday I decided to revisit...

Readers of the Indianapolis Business Journal may recall that two years ago, members of this blog remonstrated against the design of the OneAmerica Parking Garage. That story has never been told on Urban Indy, until now. The reason for sharing this now will be explained towards the end of this article. But first, some background on the process.
A member of our team (who was at the time independent of this blog) first brought up the various issues with the urban design of the garage, which was proposed to replace a surface lot at the corner of New York and Illinois. This garage was to be built...